Without congressional action, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program will expire on March 5, 2018. We do not know what the results of congressional debate will be for DACA or how these will influence other immigration issues and statuses. The Anthropology Department’s goal is to support you during this uncertain time. NYU will continue to support undocumented students, staff and faculty. If you are or someone close to you is undocumented or have DACA or temporary protected status, please know that there are many things you can do before March. The following link provides practical steps you can take as well as connections to NYU immigrant defense initiative which can help with legal advice and referrals (http://as.nyu.edu/anthropology/undergraduate/resources/daca-students.html). NYU provides additional information and resources for students here. We want to remind you during these disconcerting times that you are a valued member of our community.

The Department recently hosted, ‘Anthropology in Color’ an all day pipeline workshop sponsored by GSAS. We received more than 40 applications and brought in 20 undergraduates from area schools as well as DC, CT, Texas and South Carolina. The day featured a workshop and networking event on grad school, the application process, departmental research and more! Thanks to all the Faculty, Staff and Students who participated.

On Saturday, February 4th, 2017, several students from the Department led by Professor Jerome Whitington, participated in a Data Rescue event designed to archive and protect several websites on climate change, environmental data, and energy usage that could be threatened by our current Trump administration. Below is a statement from Professor Whitington detailing the success of the event:

“[The event] went off extremely well – about 160 people were involved, we archived a lot of federal websites and data especially from the Dept of Energy and Dept of Interior, and some other important work as well.It’s pretty heartening to see so many people engaged with environmental information and regulatory systems to such a degree of detail. Notably, we hosted a meeting among some key librarians around the country. It seems university librarians have been discussing a plan to systematically archive government data for about two decades, and some work has been done but there has never been a push to actually get it running. Due to the popular demand for this, there is now a movement for big libraries to create trusted data reserves linked in with their indexing systems. If this comes online it will be a very big win for us.”

The event was also covered extensively in the press. You can read articles about it here, here, here, and here.

From Indian Country Media: “Earlier this month, the Native American and Indigenous Students’ Group (NAISG) at New York University, guided by many mentors, hosted several days of Native American films and filmmakers to highlight indigenous storytelling. It was packed house a few weeks ago at the second annual Native American and Indigenous Film Festival. The event opened with the group’s Vice President, Andrew Begay, a junior in the College of Arts and Science studying French and Linguistics…[The Festival] was then followed by the New York City premiere of Angelo Baca’s feature documentary film, Into America: The Ancestor’s Land, which depicted the story of Angelo Baca’s grandmother, Helen Yellowman, through her own reflections and words in the Navajo language as they road tripped back to their rightful and ancestral home. Both films were applauded for their beauty, distinct from one another, yet similar in that they told intricate and compelling stories.”

Congratulations to Angelo, one of Department’s Ph.D candidates, for this amazing achievement!

There is an upcoming internship opportunity at the American Museum of Natural History.

From the Museum: “Interns are critical to our operations and we are currently seeking motivated and creative individuals to work with us. This internship enables interns to learn about public programs and film festival production, museum operations, and outreach strategies. We require our interns to work at least 2 whole days per week (10:00-5:00 pm, M-F) plus assist with 4 evening and/or weekend programs per month. Although this is an unpaid internship, many of our past interns have received payment or credit through work-study or academic credit programs offered by their universities.”